JANUARY 30 – APRIL 17, 2019

Setting at the abondoned Ellinikon Airport, which was replaced by the Athens International Airport in 2001, Naeem Mohaiemen’s fiction video Tripoli Cancelled (2017) follows the daily routine of a man who’s has been living in this lonely place for 10 years. Reading, walking, smoking, and writing letters full of fantasy and despair to his wife, the protagonist’s life arise the question if the airport is his voluntary home or he is a prisoner of an undisclosed situation.

Tripoli Cancelled is loosely inspired by the real-life experience of the artist’s father who was once trapped there for nine days in 1977 when he’d lost his passport in India. With the airport used as a temporary home for Syrian refugees, and later announced to be privatized as part of a luxury real estate project, the work stands as a monument to an ambitious example of post-war architecture where there is no future.

Initially presented at documenta 14 in 2017, this video will be screened on January 30, February 20, March 13, and April 17 in parallel to Mohaiemen’s exhibition Prisoners of Correct History at SALT Beyoğlu.